TNIP Expert—The Core Program

TNIP Expert is the latest version of the main TNIP program. It has a very different user interface to the previous version (TNIPv3.6). If you have been using previous versions of TNIP, it is advisable that you obtain TNIP Expert since it is much easier to use.

TNIP Expert is a tool which takes data either from Noise and Flight Path Monitoring systems, or from noise modelling studies carried out using the US Federal Aviation Administration's Integrated Noise Model (INM), and produces ‘real’ information about aircraft noise.

It can be used to produce a range of flight path and aircraft movement based noise descriptors or to produce and manipulate conventional noise contours.

TNIP Expert enables the user to ‘look inside’ noise contours and easily see the number and types of aircraft that have been allocated to the flight tracks which underpin the contours. The allocations of aircraft to tracks can be altered in a way that allows the carrying out of rapid ‘what-if’ analyses. These analyses show how the noise exposure patterns around an airport would change if some of the operations at the airport changed (e.g. different runways or aircraft types were used). This can be done either for conventional logarithmic contours or for Number Above contours such as the N70 which are now generating a great deal of interest. A description of how to use TNIP Expert to generate N70 contours is provided here.

TNIP Expert needs to be set up for an airport by a person with specialist expertise and who has access to aircraft noise monitoring and modelling data for the airport. Once TNIP Expert has been set up a non expert can easily interrogate data sets and generate aircraft noise information for time periods that are of interest. For example, specific information can be generated for sensitive time periods like early mornings or evenings.

TNIP Expert is freeware and the Department has produced a TNIP Expert demonstration CD-ROM. A copy of this can be obtained by contacting Nick Fisher at nick.fisher@infrastructure.gov.au. This CD contains the full TNIP Expert executable and a number of configuration and demonstration data files. A copy of the contents of the CD for the latest version can be downloaded from the link below.

TNIP Expert Setup Manual v1.0

Using TNIP Expert to Generate N70 Contours

TNIP Expert enables N70 contours to be very simply generated for an airport that has carried out a study using the United States Federal Aviation Administration's Integrated Noise Model (INM).

To generate an N70 the user produces an LAMAX detailed grid for the airport using INM. The INM detailed grid file is imported into TNIP Expert and the program compresses and organises the data into files which can be processed to generate the N70 contours. TNIP Expert also uses a number of other files from the INM study to generate information about the flight tracks that have been used as the basis of the study.

The process of importing and compressing the INM files is described in the TNIP Expert Setup Manual. INM detailed grids can be very large (often some Gigabytes in size) and this can create difficulties for some users. Specific functions have been incorporated into TNIP Expert to deal with very large data sets through the splitting, compression and re-combination of grid files. This process, which is quite straightforward, is described in the Setup Manual.

N70 contours can be readily produced once the TNIP Expert grid files have been generated. Details of this process are shown in the Noise Contours module of the TNIP EXPERT TOUR movie. When TNIP Expert computes the N70 grid it is able to produce three output files

a PDF image which is a fully labelled chart showing the contours superimposed on an image of the airport

a DXF file containing contours which can be exported to standard CAD and GIS programs

a bitmap file of the contours on a background image of the airport.

The grid files that have been generated to produce the N70 contours have multiple uses. These files can be used directly within TNIP Expert, without any further manipulation, to throw significant new light on noise exposure patterns. The program enables the user to see both the location of the INM flight tracks and the allocation of aircraft to those tracks. Rapid ‘what-if’ N70 contours can also be generated within a few seconds The TNIP Expert ‘Single Event Contour’ module uses the grid files to allow the very rapid generation of single event contours for any aircraft type on any track in the INM study.